Published by Matt Gondek May 13th, 2008
in Art, culture, vandalism, books, money and smart.
So yesterday I wrote about my encounter w/ the old dude in the leather cod-piece.
Today, I’ll tell you about something even worse.
As I was mentioning, I went to Mount Pleseant over the weekend to help w/ my GF’s yard sale. At one point in the day, her mom asked me to help her in the garage. When I walked in, I seen a comic book laying on a work bench. It was the Incredible Hulk, issue 181.
If many of you dorks like me out there know, this comic is the first appearence of Wolverine. It’s a classic. It’s old. It’s worth allot of money. About $1,000 to be precise.
There was a major problem though. Someone wrote, in ink, on the cover “Mom don’t throw in trash”. Also, someone cut out a coupon inside the book. Worthless. A classic comic ruined. For you non-nerds out there, this is the equivalent of a hot girl flashing her boobs at a party while you’re in the other room.
The irony in all of this is that her brother must of wrote this when he was younger and asked her not to throw it away because it would be valuable. But by leaving the note on the cover, he basically threw it away himself.
I dropped off some paintings at a store that sells art last year. They had me sign a contract w/ them that seems pretty basic and layed out. My pants tightened at the thought of our smooth transaction and the newly aquired legal tenders I’d soon be getting dancing in my wallet. Their joyous float from my hand to the shopkeep as I exchanged them for goods and services was something I was quite looking forward to with deft anticipation.
A few months past. Thanksgiving… Christmas… and I never heard from them but never gave it more than a second thought as I tend to not distribute second thoughts so easily. It wasn’t until I was in the area last week dropping off some handmade comic book noise to the local stores that I noticed the store was now defunct. A big closed sign, flipping me the bird and booting my thin wallet right in the ass.
I snagged the contract and dailed the number on it. No answer. I left a message. No reply. I repeated this. Twice. Fuck. I am out two paintings.
The point is, before you sign something over to someone, be sure to have arrangements if something like this were to happen. Situations like they contact you if they’re going out of business, or if your item doesn’t sell. Don’t be a fool like Matt Gondek and leave your work to strangers with loose morals and sticky fingers.
The two paintings I left there retailed for around 180 million a piece, so I am out a considerable ammount of money.
All I can say is WOW. It seems this blog is getting MUCHO-POPULARO with the spambots!! They just CAN’T STOP leaving comments!!! How blessed can echoflip.com get? I don’t mean to brag, but I posted some of the comments below so you guys can share in my joy and happiness.
The open-jerk-face sandwhich spambot at best-global-hotels.com/hotels writes:
“I found your blog via Google while searching for six star hotels and your post regarding yourself in Gaylord Palms at echoflip.com looks very interesting to me. I have seen many sites before and most of them do not look this good. I cannot wait to let my friends know about this site. Thanks for the excellent content.”
Thank you so much spambot! Even though my blog post was making fun of the name of the hotel, I’m glad that you and your friends are benifiting from my obviously amazing site layout and excellent content!! Suck an egg!
The shouldn’t get out of bed in the morning because I suck so hard spambot at myyoungerlookingskin.net writes:I couldn’t understand some parts of this article amid.gov at echoflip.com, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Sorry there spambot. I know that I use allot of big words and I honestly hope that you can find some more resources to de-code my 4th grade writing level.
The I hope you choke on your fist in your sleep spambot at wikisources.net writes:
Hello webmaster your Artikle dventures of Matt Gondek, Freelance Artist IV at echoflip.com ist very intresting!
Thanks allot spambot! I’m glad you thought my “artikle ist vey interesting!!! Learn to spell asshole!
I hope the rest of you blog owners out there can read this and not get THAT jelous. You’ll be as cool as we are someday w/ practice.
P.s. Turtles can breathe out of their behind.
My white blood cells are getting their ass handed to them right now. I got a cold, which means if I get mugged or something in the next couple days, I’ll have no chance of fighting them off. It kind of sucks.
As a result of my cold, I laid in bed last night until three AM just tossing and turning, and thinking about random things. Two things were stuck in my mind. The first was how cool Rowdy Roddy Pipper is, and the second is this:
Computer Viruses are Nerd Grafitti.
Think about this. If you’re walking downtown and see someone’s named tagged on a wall, you’re going to think one of two things. Either you’ll view it as vandalism, and write it off an obscene, or, you’ll admire it as art and as a way for that artist to help spread his name throughout the city. It all depends on what kind of person you are.
I think the same can be said for computer viruses. For people like me, I’ll get a virus and curse up and down at how every time I click my start button my computer restarts. Others though that are into the hacking culture will admire that hacker’s handi-work, and their ability to create the code that infiltrated your system. Pure artwork.
I’m not saying I condone viruses. I’m on the side of the fence that hates them. Still, after thinking about it in this light, I suppose I can have some sort of admiration for the people who do it. Just a different kind of artist doing a different kind of artwork.
Ron English has been in the artistic spotlight for quite some time now. At a time, he would design and run fake advertisements on billboards without permission. These fake ads would target large companies like McDonalds. At first glance, the ads would look like they were designed by the companies themselves. However, on second glance you’d see the true message of them.. that the advertisement was exposing some horrible act or side effect from using the product.
He also is extremely talented when it comes to fine art, like the photos here suggest. Called a “pop artist”, most of his work uses curtural icons that are instantly reconized by everyone. Some of his more famous work uses Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, and Ronald McDonald. Check out his website at www.popaganda to learn and see tons more.
